Once I “feel” that an album is done, I sometimes tend to rush through the mastering phase because I’m ready to just have it over with and move on with my life. I was in the middle of struggling through a new recording tonight that was coming out like crap, and suddenly I felt it. The album was done.
I had met my criteria, after all. I had 14 tracks ready. 15, once I split the first one in two as I had been planning. In total, everything clocked in at 47 minutes. Well beyond the minimal requirements to pass muster as an RPM album.
And so, with that, I decided to move into the next phase of the process: mastering. I was done with all of that in less than an hour. Yes, I work fast. It may not be the final master, but I want to have tracks with the proper compression and normalization applied when I’m listening to decide if it’s really done or not.
Then I had to figure out what to call all of these tracks. Up until now I had just been numbering them based on the order in which I started them. Fortunately I had made note of some possible song titles, and I ended up being able to give each a tentative title and work out the track order.
So, I’ve got cover art, mastered tracks, titles and a sequence. Kind of looks like I’m done. And I also did one more thing I’ve never bothered with before: I made a spreadsheet of all of the tracks and which iPhone apps I used on each, just so I could keep everything straight. Here it is:
| Track | Working Title | Final Title | Apps Used |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 12 | Also Sprach Moog | Animoog (x3) |
| 2 | 4 | (Does the World Really Need) More Music (?) | Xenon |
| 3 | 9 | In But Not Of | Air (x5) |
| 4 | 13.2 | Pocket Symphony (Mvt. 2) | Beatwave |
| 5 | 7 | Epoch Elliptic | Beatwave |
| 6 | 1 | Emphatic Saturation | Animoog (x7), FunkBox |
| 7 | 13.3 | Pocket Symphony (Mvt. 3) | Beatwave |
| 8 | 8 | Textires | Trope (x2) |
| 9 | 10 | The Last Day on Earth | Xenon, Argon (x2), Alchemy (x2), FunkBox, SoundPrism |
| 10 | 14 | (Already) Too Much Music (Already) | TNR-i (x2) |
| 11 | 11 | Successive Failure | GarageBand (x5), FunkBox, Alchemy, Animoog |
| 12 | 13.1 | Pocket Symphony (Mvt. 1) | Beatwave |
| 13 | 3 | December 22, 2012 | Alchemy (x2), SoundPrism (x2), FunkBox (x3), BeatMaker (x2), Argon (x6), Bebot, GarageBand (x2) |
| 14 | 5 | A Certain Sameness | Bloom (x3) |
| 15 | 13.4 | Pocket Symphony (Mvt. 4) | Beatwave |
Yes, there’s a vaguely apocalyptic theme to the titles and, to a lesser extent, the music itself. I don’t believe the world is going to end this year, nor do I believe the Mayans believed that, but it makes for good thematic material.